American McGee Apologizes for EA Trick Comment

American McGee retracts and apologizes for the statements in which he suggested that publisher Electronic Arts had tricked gamers into believing that Alice: Madness Returns was actually a horror game.

On the official blog, McGee states, “To my surprise this ignited a firestorm of press coverage from the game media. It attracted a few pissed messages from EA. Some readers have even suggested this has killed any possibility of my ever being employed by a game publisher again.”

He clarifies his statements by adding, “They carefully apply proven marketing techniques to achieve the desired customer response. If they were bad at this sort of thing they’d have been crushed by their competitors long ago and you’d be playing Madden Football from Activision or Atari or something.”

American McGee then goes on to explain that the current structure of the video game industry leads to situations where developers and publishers often disagree about the nature of a specific project and the way it is promoted and sold.

The developer also believes that he had a good working relationship with Electronic Arts and that the two Alice video games received the support they needed before and after launch.

It’s unclear whether any of the two companies has plans to bring the Alice franchise back at any point in the future.

At the moment, American McGee and Spicy Horse are working on a new project called Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, which aims to blend Japanese mythology with the core elements of Red Riding Hood.

The Kickstarter effort for the game is more than halfway to its goal with about nine days remaining for fans to contribute.

The game uses classic action role-playing game mechanics and players will be able to explore a deep world and battle a variety of enemies while customizing their own character.